Low resolution-to-high resolution image correlation

Abstract

Systems and methods for facilitating a WYSIWYG relationship between character strings when rendered on a relatively low resolution device, such as a computer monitor, and the same character strings when rendered on a relatively high resolution device, such as a laser printer or commercial offset printing press, involve determining the difference in the widths of each character string when rendered in both the low resolution format and the high resolution format and inserting or deleting space as required between the individual characters in the character string such that the widths of the low resolution and high resolution strings are substantially equalized.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0001]The present invention relates generally to preparing electronic documents for printing and, more particularly, to a system and method for decreasing the disparity between characters as they appear on a display device, such as a computer monitor, and as they appear when rendered on a print medium.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002]The use of computers to create documents for printing is well known, as is the use of high-resolution output devices, such as laser printers and prepress systems. Despite the fact that computers and high-resolution output devices are commonly connected, the two types of devices have inherent incompatibilities that have chronically troubled computer and printing companies.[0003]For ease of description, all letters, numbers, punctuation marks, graphic elements and symbols that are supported by a given font are collectively referred to herein as “characters”. Well-known data formats, such as PostScript and TrueType, have been develope...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0019]It is an object of the invention to provide WYSIWYG functionality in an HTML environment without the necessity for transmitting HTML documents from a client to a server for rendering into a different format and then returning the converted versions to the client for viewing.

Problems solved by technology

Despite the fact that computers and high-resolution output devices are commonly connected, the two types of devices have inherent incompatibilities that have chronically troubled computer and printing companies.

The cumulative effect of these slight shifts in character width are sufficient to make the size of character strings displayed on the screen an unreliable indicator of the size of the same character strings on the printed page.

WYSIWYG is available to computer users in modern word processing, desktop publishing, and other computer applications, but has not been achieved in some circumstances.

This is a particularly serious problem if the computer user is expressly trying to print an image exactly as it appears on the screen.

This has severely limited the usefulness of HTML for many printing applications.

As can be appreciated, this prior art technique can cause repetitive network traffic to and from the user's computer during the document preparation process.

The system may lead to user frustration if the user experiences transmission delays or is dissatisfied that the bitmap image returned from the server does not reflect the user's desired document appearance, requiring reentry of text by the user.

This method has the drawback of rendering the screen in a pixilated fashion.

This makes the printed image unsatisfactory for most applications.

The same spacing may not, however, be optimum in all cases, such as when the user elects to use a significantly smaller or significantly larger point size.

Despite the desirability of WYSIWYG printing and the extensive development and use of the Web and related systems, the problem of HTML-to-print incompatibilities has continued to trouble Web developers and users.

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